


gotta spread love around

by wants2die



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Family, M/M, Weddings, th au where jenna and ty are siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 11:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6852964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wants2die/pseuds/wants2die
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler Joseph is a good big brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gotta spread love around

**Author's Note:**

> :^)) okay so my friend gem prompted me 2 write this like … a year ago & because i am the slowest writer ever it is done now! she requested big brother!ty + little sister!jenna & i added the joshler bc im a heathen lmao. i hope y'all enjoy!  
> title from coldplay's brothers & sisters.

Tyler leans his head against the window and tries to ignore the way it rattles his skull around worse than the roller coasters down at the beach. He holds Jenna's hand tight so she doesn't forget he's there to take care of her. That happens, sometimes, and Jenna gets scared and starts to cry, and he'd do anything to avoid hearing her cry. Now that's always skull-rattling, worse than anything, the sound making his head and heart hurt in equal measures.

Jenna is his baby sister, and he holds her hand extra tight today, because it's her first day of junior high and she cried into his shoulder earlier that morning, her tears soaking his shirt and collarbone and her brand new sparkly lip gloss leaving a light stain. Sometimes it's hard, but he has to take care of her.

Last year was hard. Tyler had to walk Jenna to her school and then take the public bus to his own, because Jenna was only in 5th grade and she refused to go to school without her brother. She still does, but at least they'll be in the same school this year. Last year he had to wake her up at four in the morning in order to get her ready in time. Their mom wasn't awake yet, since she worked the night shift at the hospital, and their dad had already left for work at the office, so it was up to Tyler to manage himself and Jenna.

Sometimes it's stressful, but Tyler loves Jenna, so he has to make sure she's okay and warm and safe and happy at all times. That's the rule.

His sister shifts on the seat besides him and he turns his head to grin at her. “Are you nervous?” he mouths. She nods, lips pressed close together but eyes bright. He untangles their fingers and threads an arm around her shoulder, pulling her tight against his side. She squirms but relaxes into his hug. “It'll be okay, Jen,” he whispers into her hair. “You know it will.”

She nods again. “Yeah.”

“Do you remember how scared you were last year 'cause I wouldn't be there? And then it turned out great, right? You met Grace and you love her.” Tyler strokes Jenna's hair gently. “This year will be the same. I promise. You're gonna love Ridgewood.”

Jenna sighs then, but when Tyler gets back on the bus after school she's already there, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, leaned over the back of the seat and talking animatedly with the boy sitting behind them.

Tyler plops down beside his sister and flicks her ponytail affectionately. She beams at him and he knows she's gonna be fine without him.

* * *

Sea salt is thick in the air, that particular warm, heavy, thick wind that you only feel at the beach in summer dragging across Jenna's cheeks and whipping her hair around.

Her eyes are ringed with smudged mascara and as heavy with salt water as the air around her. She feels empty.

Jenna digs her toes into the cool sand and tries to fill herself back up.

 _Tyler would be upset if he knew you were sad_ , she reminds herself. He doesn't need that right now. She has to be a good little sister. She should be there, damnit, not stranded on a beach in North Carolina with Grace, but a combination of coastal weather systems and their parents are stopping her from coming back home.

It's horrible, but Jenna hates her parents for it, just a little bit, a tiny sprout of anger blooming inside her chest. How _dare_ they refuse to let her come back home to see her big brother? He needs her. She doesn't care that they don't know yet when he's going to wake up, and that she wouldn't be allowed to visit him even if she were home. She needs to be closer, goddamnit, she needs to be there. She's always been closer to him than their parents. He took care of her when they didn't.

It hurts that she can't be there for him. It hurts that her _big brother Tyler_ tried to kill himself and she was off in fucking Corolla with Grace. It hurts that he texted her 40 minutes before their mom found him slumped against the toilet with glassy eyes, and she ignored him. She didn't even reply to ' _good night jenstone i love you i lvoe u_ ' and it breaks her heart because he needed her. It's always been the other way around, it's always been her needing him, but he needed her this time and she wasn't there. She wasn't there for him.

She pulls her cardigan tighter around herself and keeps walking.

At least he's still around. At least her mom found him in time and rushed him to the ER and he was okay. She thanks her lucky stars for that. She doesn't know what she'd do without her brother, she hasn't ever known.

Jenna can't do this without Tyler. She doesn't want to. It's barely 5 in the morning and a sixteen year old Jenna Joseph is walking into the waves and thinking that her brother is the only thing keeping her from not stopping, from just walking out into the ocean until the water is over her head and just. Not coming up for air.

And she thinks, with a cold, heavy tear like the salt water ebbing at her ankles prickling at the corner of her eye, that her brother doesn't have anything to keep him floating.

* * *

Her brother has found the thing that keeps him from sinking.

It's good. Really, it is. When they were young, she thinks that maybe she was the thing he was living for, but maybe it was the fact that he was too scared to consider other options. It's fine. She knows he loves her, anyway. Just not enough to stay alive for her.

She's being dumb. Jenna honestly is so, so glad Tyler has Josh and they have each other. They deserve each other. Tyler deserves to be happy, and Josh makes him happy, so it's good that they're getting married. It's good that Tyler's gonna move out of the little apartment they've shared since Tyler turned 19 and into his and Josh's own little apartment. It's good that Tyler is leaving her behind.

She's walking on the beach. It's the same beach she and Grace used to go to, except she hasn't talked to Grace in a long time and her brother isn't dying this time. Her brother is living, instead.

Thank God for that.

Thank Josh for that, more like.

She buries her hands in the warm pockets of her jacket and keeps walking through the sand, her bare feet (and her bare heart, though she hates herself a little bit for being such a terrible cliche) sinking with every step.

Jenna nearly jumps out of her skin when a warm hand tugs hers out of her pocket and twines their fingers together, but it's just Josh and she relaxes against his side and berates herself internally for thinking badly about him. He's _Josh_. She's known him ever since she was 11 and Tyler spent the whole bus ride home leaned over the back of their seat talking to him with stars in his eyes. He's her brother just as much as Tyler is, and he's about to legally be her brother, and she can't hate him. She can't do that to Tyler. Or to Josh.

“Hey, Jenn,” Josh says, grinning at her. His hair is mussed from sleep (and, she supposes with a suppressed shudder, from Tyler's hands) and dyed a shade of pale pink, and he's wearing sweatpants and Nikes and that's about it. “You excited to walk Ty down the aisle?”

That's another thing. Their parents haven't so much as sent them a chain email or a birthday card ever since Jenna moved in with Tyler, and they weren't happy to learn that Tyler would be marrying messy, punk, beautiful Josh instead of some respectable Protestant girl. So they decided that they wouldn't be there for their only son's wedding, and they decided that Jenna would have to walk her big brother down the aisle on the biggest day of his life. They decided that Jenna would have to be the one to give him up.

“I dunno,” Jenna manages, pressing her face into Josh's shoulder. “You excited to marry him?”

She peers up at him and watches his face light up; the way she watched him smile the first time he and Tyler talked on an old, vaguely smelly school bus, the way she watched him smile when Tyler proposed to him nine years later. His eyes are bright. They always are when he's talking about Tyler.

“Nevermind, you gross weirdo,” Jenna says, shoving at Josh's side. “I think I already know what your answer's gonna be. God, you two are soulmates. It's disgusting.”

Josh's grin only widens. “I know, right? I love him so much, Jenna. He's perfect.”

“Alright, alright, that's enough of that cutesy stuff now. There'll be time enough for that later. C'mon, let's get you back to the hotel, Joshie.” She tugs at his hand.

“Everyone's looking for you,” he tells her, sounding relieved, like he's remembered something important. “Mom told me to find you and bring you back to the hotel. They wanna get you dressed and do your makeup, all those dumb girly things.”

“You're getting your makeup done too, idiot,” Jenna says fondly. Then a thought occurs to her. “Shit, they're not mad at me, are they?”

Josh shakes his head. “'Course not. Ty wouldn't let them be.”

She smiles wide and irrepressible at that, and doesn't let it go until her cheeks start to hurt. She doesn't let Josh's hand go, either, until they're back at the house. God, she can't wait for Tyler to marry this boy.

* * *

Josh's mom has warm hands.

Jenna knows this, of course, has known it ever since Tyler made her come to dinner with Josh's parents so he wouldn't be alone. Josh's mom had dark brown eyes that glittered when she held a hand out for Jenna to shake, and even though Jenna _hated_ hugging strangers, she found herself ignoring Josh's mom's hand and drawing the woman into her arms. Josh's mom made a surprised noise but her hands pressed against Jenna's back and Jenna could feel their warmth through her cardigan. All she could think at that moment was _please don't fuck this up, Tyler._

And Tyler didn't fuck it up, and Jenna didn't fuck it up either, and it was okay, and so now, three years later, Josh's mom's hand is pressing down warmly onto her shoulder, while her other hand holds Jenna's eyelashes, clamped tight between an eyelash curler.

“Stay still for just another second, love,” Josh's mom reminds her, warm and sharp as ginger, her hand firm on Jenna's shoulder.

Earlier, Jenna had asked why she couldn't do her makeup herself (after all, she'd been doing her makeup since she was fifteen. Before that, Tyler had done it for her sometimes in the early mornings before school, on the rare days when he wasn't too tired) and Josh's mom had just clucked reprehensively at her and told her that there was no way the maid of honor was doing her own makeup at her brother's wedding, so she should sit her butt down and open her eyes wide.

She did, obviously. A girl doesn't argue with her soon-to-be-indirect-mother-in-law on the day her son's getting married.

This woman is about to be her family. Her family is going to grow from a lost boy and his starry eyed little sister to a real family. Josh's mom and Josh and Tyler and Jenna. Jenna thinks she should be scared, but she's just happy. She can't wait to gain a mom and a new brother and to have this woman with warm hands who calls her _love_ be her mother.

Jenna thinks she's going to like these in-laws.

* * *

The sand is wet and hot between Tyler's toes, squishing damply every time he takes a step. Jenna is clinging tightly to his arm, the warmth of her hand pressing through the fabric of his suit. Her fingernails are digging into his skin slightly, leaving half-moons in her wake. Just like Jenna.

He takes a few more steps through the sand, and then he sees him.

Josh, looking more beautiful than he ever has, dressed in a suit matching Tyler's, pale pink flowers threaded through his pale pink hair. Looking at Josh feels like staring into the sun, and Tyler finally thinks he understands why the groom isn't supposed to see his bride (or his groom) before the wedding. If Tyler had seen Josh glowing like this, looking so fucking angelic standing there with his back to the ocean, he doesn't think either of them would have even made it to the wedding.

Tyler can't even think straight. He just runs. Not away from Josh (that would defeat the whole purpose) but towards Josh, towards the man he's going to marry in about five minutes, and he's at Josh's side within seconds, grabbing Josh's hands in his own and beaming at him.

“Well, then,” the priest chuckles. “I guess someone's excited, hmm?”

Tyler just nods, not willing to look away from his Josh.

“That's a good sign. Alright, let's get on with it, then, shall we?” Tyler doesn't think he's ever agreed with someone more. _Yes, please, the sooner the better_ , he thinks. _I'm tired of not being married to you, Josh_.

“We are gathered here today to join Josh Dun and Tyler Joseph in holy matrimony. If anyone here objects to this union, speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

The crowd is blissfully silent. _Damn right_ , Tyler thinks.

“Wonderful. Now, I understand you two have prepared your own vows?”

Tyler watches as Josh nods, and with a whispered apology he pulls a hand away from Tyler's to grab a wrinkled sheet of paper from his pocket.

“Tyler. My Tyler. We met on a gross old school bus in Columbus. It smelled kind of like sweat and it was fu- it was _freezing_. But every day, I woke up, and I was so happy that I got to ride that smelly, cold school bus for an hour, and do you know why?”

Tyler shakes his head, tears already brimming in his eyes.

“It was because you were there, Tyler. I could go anywhere on Earth and I'd be at home as long as you were there next to me to hold my hand.” He squeezes Tyler's hand gently. “You make me happy. So, so happy. But it's more than that. You make me feel whole, Tyler. You complete me. You've been a part of me for the last thirteen years, and I don't want that to change, ever. I want to spend the next thirteen years together, and the next thirteen years after that. You're my forever, and I'm so incredibly lucky to be marrying you today, because I don't want to spend another second not being completely, totally _yours_.”

Tyler is utterly wrecked at this point, tears rolling down his cheeks, and he's looking at Josh with his dewy eyes and just beaming.

“God, I love you,” he says warmly. He wipes his eyes with his free hand. “How am I ever going to top that, you guys?”

Josh laughs. “You're an idiot.”

“Your idiot,” he reminds Josh. “Alright. So, mine's not written down, which means I probably won't do as good a job as Josh, okay? Don't get your hopes up.”

Tyler steals Josh's hand back and entwines their fingers together. “Okay. Okay. Josh. You are the love of my life. Do you want to know how long we'd known each other when I realized that I was completely and utterly gone on you?” He waits for Josh to nod before he goes on.

“A week. It was a week since the first time we talked. I was so, so in love with you then, and it's been thirteen years, and I still am. It isn't often that a person gets to meet and fall in love with their soulmate. I did. That makes me the luckiest man on Earth. Marrying you here today makes me the luckiest man on Earth. And I am so proud to do that, Josh. And I'll be just as proud to be yours after another thirteen years, and another, and I'm never going to stop being so proud that I landed Josh _freaking_ Dun. I promise, okay?”

Tyler finishes, and reaches up and wipes Josh's eyes free of his tears. “This is happy, baby,” he murmurs, his hand cupping Josh's cheek. “I'm so happy that I'm yours.”

“Okay,” the minister says with a bright chuckle. “I think we all know the answers to this question by now, but I'm going to make sure.”

Jenna scampers up and presents Josh and Tyler with the rings. Josh holds his up and grins at the crowd, and Tyler really does think he might be looking at the sun. He wonders how he ever got this lucky. The ring is warm and heavy and wonderful in the palm of his hand, and it'll feel even better against his cheek when Josh is kissing him later.

“Joshua William Dun, do you take Tyler Robert Joseph to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?”

Josh nods. “I do.” Tyler holds out his hand, and Josh slides the ring onto Tyler's finger with his own shaking hand, right next to Tyler's engagement ring, and Tyler's breath catches in his throat. This is - it's real. Josh leans in and says, a whisper-quiet burst of love, “With this ring, I thee wed.”

“And Tyler Robert Joseph, do you take Joshua William Dun to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?”

“God, yes, I do.” Tyler grins wide and proud at Josh as he pushes the ring onto Josh's proffered hand.

* * *

“May I have this dance?” Jenna holds a hand out to Tyler, her smile wide and only slightly trembling.

Tyler untangles from Josh, grabbing Jenna’s hand. Her dress whirls around her, a cloud of pale pink as he spins her. When she lands, she’s laughing brightly, and Tyler tugs her close as a new song begins to play. His voice is soft in her ear, singing along to the lyrics.

Jenna’s heart catches in her throat.

“I don’t want...” Jenna loses her words and her courage. She strokes her thumb in circles across Tyler’s shoulder. “I can’t lose you, Ty. Before, it,” she takes a deep breath. “If something happened to you, I’d be -”

“Hey.” Tyler smiles at her. Not a trace of a tremble. “You’re never losing me, Jenna Joseph.”

Jenna lets him twirl her around again, and again, until the song is over and Tyler lets her go. She watches him be swept back into Josh’s arms, and, for once, she trusts that he will come back to her.


End file.
